President Lee Myung-bak instructed aides Monday to handle policies with the “safety and health of the people in mind,” his spokesman said, as the government is under pressure to halt American beef imports following a recent mad cow case in the United States.

Lee made the remark during a weekly meeting with senior secretaries after his economic secretary reported that the government is taking steps to dispel public concern about the safety of U.S. beef while placing its top priority on the health of the people.

“The government should manage policies with consumer prices, jobs, and the safety and health of the people in mind,” Lee was quoted as saying by presidential spokesman Park Jeong-ha. Lee, however, made no direct mention of U.S. beef, the spokesman said.

Since the outbreak of the first mad cow case in six years in the U.S., the government has been under pressure to halt imports.

But the government decided to continue imports with strengthened quarantine checks, saying the latest case involving a dairy cow is not directly connected to beef that can be shipped to the country.

American beef imports have long been a politically sensitive issue in South Korea.

South Korea resumed U.S. beef imports in 2008 after a five-year ban. The decision sparked months of anti-government rallies, seriously rocking the fledgling government of President Lee Myung-bak amid public perception his government endangered public health to curry favor with the U.S.

The government stressed at the time that the decision was based on scientific grounds.

South Korea only imports beef from animals younger than 30 months with all “specified risk materials” removed. Those materials are the parts considered capable of transmitting the variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease to humans.

Earlier in the day, President Lee urged the ruling and opposition parties to put partisan interests behind and pass a series of key pending bills through parliament before the National Assembly expires next month.

Lee issued the appeal in his biweekly radio address as the fates of dozens of important bills pending in parliament grow increasingly uncertain. The term of the outgoing National Assembly ends on May 29 and any bills unhandled by then will be automatically scrapped.

“I earnestly ask (the rival parties) to open an extraordinary parliamentary session before the 18th National Assembly expires and pass the pending bills without fail,” Lee said, stressing that the bills are “an urgent issue for the people” beyond partisan interests.

The ruling Saenuri Party and the main opposition Democratic United Party had planned to hold a one-day extraordinary session last week, but the meeting was called off at the last minute due to differences over a bill aimed at preventing physical clashes in parliament.

Another pending bill empowers police to use location information of emergency callers. The measure was initiated following a public uproar over the grisly death of a woman at the hands of a Korean-Chinese kidnapper.

Noting that the government has launched a war on loan sharks, Lee also vowed to use every possible means to root out the illegal practice that he said represents “one of the most serious violations that eats away at our society.”

Earlier this month, the government declared war on illegal private loans, opening call centers across the nation to collect and investigate reports of financial and other damage from loan sharks, such as violating the upper limit of 30 percent on interest rates, and threats and assaults from private moneylenders.

(From news reports)